He has enjoyed a stellar year overseeing the widely praised Olympics coverage. A safe pair of hands with wide-ranging BBC management experience, Mosey was made acting BBC Vision director after George Entwistle was named director general in July.

Mosey is a BBC lifer, having worked at the corporation since the mid-1980s, and has a strong background in journalism as well as non-news output. He is a former editor of Radio 4's Today programme, where he recruited James Naughtie as a presenter, and was controller of Radio 5 Live when it hired Nicky Campbell, Victoria Derbyshire and Richard Littlejohn. He has also run BBC Sport.

Caroline Thomson

The former BBC chief operations officer quit the corporation in September after she missed out on the director general job. The BBC has missed her crisis-management experience since the Savile scandal erupted.

Thomson was among the frontrunners to succeed Mark Thompson and would have been the corporation's first female director general. Since 2000, she has held senior BBC corporate roles including director of policy and legal and deputy director of the BBC World Service. She is a former Panorama producer and began her career on the corporation's journalism trainee scheme.

Peter Horrocks, BBC head of global news

Horrocks, who oversees the BBC World Service, was briefly parachuted in to oversee Savile-related coverage last month and is credited with overseeing the Panorama investigation into the sexual abuse allegations and the axed Newsnight story on the claims. He then went on holiday and was not around for the programme's botched north Wales care home abuse story on 2 November. He is one of the BBC's most senior news executives, overseeing more than 2,500 journalists worldwide. Horrocks is a former editor of Newsnight and Panorama and has never worked outside news and current affairs.

Richards was among those interviewed by Lord Patten for the director general role earlier this year. His application was unsuccessful, but Richards could no doubt be tempted back into the frame after eight years as chief executive of the communications regulator.

With years of experience in complex areas of regulation, Richards would be a credible appointment for the BBC as it aims to get a grip on the scandal. He has political clout, too, but his Labour connections – including being a former senior adviser on media policy to Tony Blair – would not sit well with the Conservatives. Worked as the BBC controller of corporate strategy.

Abraham was tipped as a possible director general contender earlier this year, but did not apply for the job, deeming it too soon to contemplate leaving Channel 4 after only two years in the job. Some who know this fiercely ambitious executive predicted he would probably see himself as a credible candidate when George Entwistle stepped down, so it still might be too soon.

After a stint in advertising, he moved into commercial TV management before taking the top Channel 4 job, despite having no programme-making experience. However, the runaway critical and ratings success of the broadcaster's Paralympics coverage is a feather in his cap.

The former BBC1 controller was forced to resign in 2007 over the "Crowngate" affair, when BBC promotional footage was falsely edited to give the impression that the Queen had stormed out of a photo shoot. At ITV he has led something of a creative revival with hits including Downton Abbey, although The X Factor appears past its best.

His channel broadcast the documentary that opened the door for the flood of Jimmy Savile sexual abuse allegations, 10 months after the BBC's Newsnight shelved a similar investigation.

Before the BBC and ITV he was a successful independent producer, running the company responsible for I'm Alan Partridge, Da Ali G Show and Smack the Pony.

An outside bet. As the first and longest-serving female chief executive of a FTSE 100 company, she is leaving the Financial Times owner, Pearson, after 15 years at the end of the year. An American-born British citizen, who began her journalism career with US news agency the Associated Press, Scardino became US managing editor and then chief executive of the Economist before taking the top job at Pearson.

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